Sunday, October 31, 2010

The next day after my post below I started reading the Amazon instructions to turn my book into an ebook. What? I couldn’t understand them. So I tried the instructions for Smashwords. Same thing. I know I’m not stupid. But here’s the thing: I was coming down with a cold. You know how you can’t think with a cold? That’s what happened. And the cold kept getting worse and worse each day. Today is the first day I can write anything or do anything on my computer. I’m not about to try the instructions until I feel a lot better. This is the nice thing about doing ebooks. I have no deadline.

I’ll be getting back to it soon and if I still can’t understand the instructions I have a friend who has put up 5 or 6 ebooks and she’ll kindly walk me through the process. I’m anxious to get this going.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Not Quite Writing

Not writing at all, really. However, I’ve decided to turn some of my published books into eBooks. A friend of mine has done so and is enjoying new sales. Almost everyone knows about Joe Konrath’s experience, but I’m sure I’ll never sell anywhere near what he has.

The first time I thought about doing this it overwhelmed me. You see, I’m going to have to type into my computer any book I want to make an eBook. I never made a backup copy on a CD. Mostly because they didn’t exist in 1984. I backed them up onto floppies and later to the small discs (can’t remember what we called them) and even if I had them I’d have no way to put those into my computer as there’s no slots for them.

My cookbook holder just arrived. No, I’m not going to start cooking. I need the holder to hold my book upright while I type it into Word.

But first I have to read how to format, etc. The first book I’m going to do is A CREATIVE KIND OF KILLER, originally published under my pseudonym, Jack Early. This time the it will say, Sandra Scoppettone writing as Jack Early.

I think I’ll keep writing about this new venture here so you can follow my progress, should there be any. I don’t feel overwhelmed now because what else am I doing?

Tomorrow I’ll begin reading the instructions. I’m not great at following instructions. I taught myself everything about the computer in the 80s. And then I taught myself how to get online. Still, I don’t think I can teach myself how to do this without at least glancing at the instructions.